Today was supposed to be our relaxing day... And while we did relax more than the others so far, I don't think we really need to call it "relaxing" actually. I have decided that "relaxing" isn't a word used to describe a vacation or full on traveling with two small children. Last night both the kids and Steven fell asleep immediately when we turned off the TV at 9:30. It was crazy. I was the only person awake just typing a blog and editing pictures. There was a lot of snoring around me. I think I went to bed around 11 and we all slept until 7am. I honestly think we might have slept in longer but right at about 7 Kenzie started whining. I grabbed her out of the bed and pulled her into ours to let Will keep sleeping (and he never budged). She told me she had a bad dream and although we laid in bed for a while, she was awake. We also had plans to meet Grandma and Grandaddy down at breakfast around 7:30 and Will was starting to stir so we all got up and got ready.
We ended up just putting on swimsuits and heading down to breakfast. The kids were not really having breakfast in the hotel. They weren't into it. Will ended up eating a ton after some prodding but Kenzie literally only ate fruit and a powdered donut. It's vacation, we are going to let her get away with it for the moment but this won't fly when we are home again. Honestly, she has never been a breakfast person to begin with so this is not something she enjoys. I can't blame her, I'm not huge on it either. I have forgotten to eat before and not realized it until I notice I'm sure hungry at lunchtime. Anyway, after breakfast we then went back up to the room to get ready for the pool before making our way down there. Kenzie had to sit out 10 minutes at the start of our pool time. We had a discussion with the kids before we even came down that if they got into any sort of serious trouble (and by serious I mean things that are unacceptable such as bad backtalk or purposely not doing something we tell them to do or something that they KNOW is not allowed) while we were here they would lose 5 minutes at a time of pool time. She had two instances that we had to take time from her so I set my phone's timer and she sat while the rest of us enjoyed the water. Eventually her time ended and she got in. The kids swam all over. Kenzie did it on her own but Will made me help him "swim" from one side of the pool to the other over and over again. I would let him go to the stairs on his own and make him jump off of them out to me but then I would take him across the pool. It made him happy. Kenzie was just being her little fishy self. About 20 minutes before we planned to get out we heard the loudest bang I think I have ever heard. Everyone in and around the pool jumped. A transformer blew. All of a sudden, it was super quiet as the power cut off to the hotel. It was quite something.
Eventually I had to bring Will back up to the room because he had an accident in his swimsuit and I needed to clean him up. The elevators were down so I was thankful we were only on the second floor because I had to carry him up the stairs. Luckily, we had hot water to clean up but there were no lights in the room. We also had TV. I'm not 100% sure what things blew exactly but it seemed like things that pulled more power. Like the AC and elevators. Those were obviously off. When Steven and Kenzie got up in the room the power was cycling through it seemed as they tried to fix it. We decided to get cleaned up and head out to the Old Seven Mile Bridge. We initially read that you could park near the Pigeon Key Visitor's Center on the opposite side of US 1 and walk out on the old bridge a ways but it was all shut down. I ran into the visitor's center to ask and the lady told me that it was supposed to have been opened back up for a month or two before they shut it down for the next few years as they fix the structural support of the old bridge to make it safer but they never opened it. She figured they were running late and would just end up running one project into another and not open it for a few years on the Marathon side. We ended up going across the bridge to Little Duck Key on the other side to see if we could walk over there and sure enough, we could. We walked out part way on the bridge. It was super beautiful but super hot so we didn't stay out there too long. We decided to let Kenzie use my little point and shoot camera sometimes on the trip and this seemed like a great time to give it to her. She actually took some pretty good pictures. It's so nice having a kid that can not only physically take pics without help but often gets them to be not blurry and sometimes even has a good eye. That doesn't mean I don't have random pictures of holes in the street and shadows because I have that too. I just don't keep those. Haha! I'm loving seeing things from her perspective though. Funny the things I miss because I'm not down on her level.
We decided after the bridge to run to K-Mart. For some reason we always run into this K-Mart when we are in Marathon because they have awesome souvenir type stuff for less than in a souvenir shop. We had been promising Kenzie goggles since she did so well with her swim lessons this year so we wanted to grab those before the beach tomorrow. Steven and I also found some awesome UPF 40 fishing shirts that we are going to use more as rash guards that say Marathon on them so they serve as rash guards and a souvenir. Perfect! Plus, we needed more bottled water and some applesauce pouches because Will has a serious applesauce problem. As in he needs an Applesauce Anonymous group to join. We ended up having McDonald's for lunch. It was quick and easy. That was good when we really just wanted to get back to the hotel to "relax" some before our busy afternoon. The kids each ate their Happy Meals and then we headed back to the hotel to "rest". The kids were both exhausted. Kenzie ate most of her lunch with her head on the table and Will continued to be so over tired that he acted like we had given him some sort of caffeine pills or something. We pulled the sofa bed out and let them relax while they watched TV. We wanted to rest a bit before heading out to Key West in the afternoon and we knew that at least Will would nap on the way down there but if Kenzie didn't we still wanted her to have some down time since she isn't getting "rest time" on this vacation.
Right about 2pm we set out again. This time... to Key West. Steven drove Grandaddy in their car and I drove Grandma in ours. Unfortunately, we cannot fit everyone in the same car so we had to take two and Grandma is not keen on driving in Key West so we elected to have Steven drive their car. Not a big deal. Just something to remember when you have minimal room. The drive down was uneventful. Will fell asleep about 2 minutes after we left the hotel and Kenzie chatted the entire way. We ended up taking the long way around the island once we hit Key West so that Will could nap a bit longer. We didn't have too much trouble finding parking around the Southernmost Point (Trivia Notes: The Southernmost Point buoy is not at the Southernmost Point. It is just at the most southern point you can go without having clearance to enter the Naval Air Base.) The line was pretty long waiting to take pictures, which is what we have always experienced here, so Steven dropped his parents car off in a parking spot behind mine and they sat in the car while we braved the heat. Steven keeps saying that there are levels of heat: Rest of the Country Hot, Florida Hot, Surface of the Sun Hot, and then there is Key West Hot. It was torture but we braved it for the pictures. Kenzie was having fun running around taking pictures with her camera anyway but Will wasn't as into the heat. He just wanted to be held, which doesn't help with the heat level. We were able to ask a nice couple to take our picture and then headed back to the cars.
We decided then to drop off Grandma and Grandaddy at the garage we would all be parking at later and we headed out to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park to see the fort. We actually really like the beach at the state park but we didn't have time for that so we wanted to just visit the fort. If we thought it was hot at the Southernmost Point, it was because we had not yet ventured to the fort. It was so hot that Will refused to walk. He was not having any of it. A few times we got him to get down to do something but most of the time he cried if he wasn't being held. Poor guy was done. We didn't stay long at the fort but it was fun to see it. We also saw a ton of iguanas around the fort including some huge ones that were showing off for pictures. They were posing it seemed. The kids did like those. Anytime Will has seen an iguana on this trip, he starts yelling about Maui turning into one in Moana. Crazy kid.
At this point it was nearing dinner so we headed back to the parking garage and met Grandma and Grandaddy in the little mall type thing next to it. We then decided to walk over to Alonzo's Oyster Bar for dinner. We have eaten here a few times and the food is always good. Will was still not having any of this but was ready for dinner so we were able to convince him to walk some knowing that food was just on the other side of the marina. Dinner was super yummy. Our service left something to be desired. Other than the kid's meal that the kids shared, everyone had something incorrect about their order. It was all figured out though and everything was good enough that we tried to not worry about it much. Kenzie wasn't into eating but did eventually finish some food. Will ate everything under the sun again. He especially liked my sweet corn mashed potatoes. The funny thing was though that he refused to eat Daddy's. I guess mine tasted better. Haha! When we left the restaurant we stopped to look at some of the boats and a man was feeding his shrimp peels to some tarpon by the docks. The kids thought that was awesome. I know they don't remember Robbies from our last trip and I can't wait to see how they react to the tarpon there in a couple of days. They are going to flip out. Sidenote: I cracked up when I looked at the pictures of pre-dinner Will and post-dinner Will. He definitely gives new meaning to the word "hangry".
We then walked back over to Mallory Square because it was nearing time for the Sunset Festival. We wanted to stop to do some souvenir shopping as well. We initially told the kids that they could each pick a t-shirt and a small toy or stuffed animal on this trip. Kenzie was insistent on a dress though. We found a pretty one with hula girls on it that she LOVED. We had a long discussion with her that based on the price, if she wanted the dress she would have to give up her toy. She insisted that was okay and we ended up with the dress. We couldn't find a good shirt in Will's size so we figure we will get one for him in Islamorada on the way home and he ended up picking out a stuffed pirate that he named Petey Pirate. He also decided that the pirate was missing his leg and has a peg leg because his leg was eaten by a shark. Quite the imagination on this one...
It was about time for the Sunset Festival then so we went over to the water. Kenzie seemed to think it was a show type thing we would watch. The kids weren't into the sunset itself mostly but they sat for a bit so we could get some pictures because it is beautiful. Then we went to see some of the performers, which fulfilled her "show" expectations. The best one we watched was the guy on the unicycle. Kenzie really enjoyed him so she asked if we could give him $1 when he was done, which we let her do. She asked me if we could go talk to him but I told her he needed to get ready for his next show. We also watched a sword swallower. He was good at what he does but he took forever to get to his one trick so he wasn't as exciting. He took so long that Kenzie actually questioned if he could even do the trick he was hyping up. We weren't so sure there for a bit. Will was just taking it all in but his favorite part was probably the chicken he saw. Whatever works. The Sunset Festival is one of my favorite parts of the Keys. I still stand that dealing with Key West with two small children is all made worth it by seeing the sun go down in Key West. It is so gorgeous.
We decided to head back after that because we knew we had an hour or so drive back into Marathon. The drive back was also uneventful. Just dark. We made it back with one sleeping child and one awake. Want to guess which was which? Kenzie fell asleep about 30 minutes into the trip. I had to carry her into the hotel (Steven's back can't handle her for long periods of time and he had already held her up to see the performers at the Sunset Festival) and she never even really woke up. When we got to the room I put her down to get Will changed into pjs and she climbed into the bed fully clothed and went back to sleep. We decided to just leave her. Will wanted to watch TV but we told him no and it wasn't long before he snuggled up to his sister and was asleep too. The best part was when I walked by to go to the bathroom, he was rubbing her cheek with his eyes closed just like he had done with me a couple nights before. So sweet. She was asleep so she didn't complain. Later when Steven walked by he noticed that they were both asleep and Kenzie was snuggled up with Petey Pirate and Will. They melt me. They might drive me to my wits end, but these moments make it all worth it. It helps that when they sleep, they are quiet. ;)
We had quite the long and hot day but it was awesome. Tomorrow we hit up one of the best beaches in the Keys, Bahia Honda. We have plans to go in the morning and go back again in the evening around sunset. It should make for a fun (and sandy) day.
We ended up just putting on swimsuits and heading down to breakfast. The kids were not really having breakfast in the hotel. They weren't into it. Will ended up eating a ton after some prodding but Kenzie literally only ate fruit and a powdered donut. It's vacation, we are going to let her get away with it for the moment but this won't fly when we are home again. Honestly, she has never been a breakfast person to begin with so this is not something she enjoys. I can't blame her, I'm not huge on it either. I have forgotten to eat before and not realized it until I notice I'm sure hungry at lunchtime. Anyway, after breakfast we then went back up to the room to get ready for the pool before making our way down there. Kenzie had to sit out 10 minutes at the start of our pool time. We had a discussion with the kids before we even came down that if they got into any sort of serious trouble (and by serious I mean things that are unacceptable such as bad backtalk or purposely not doing something we tell them to do or something that they KNOW is not allowed) while we were here they would lose 5 minutes at a time of pool time. She had two instances that we had to take time from her so I set my phone's timer and she sat while the rest of us enjoyed the water. Eventually her time ended and she got in. The kids swam all over. Kenzie did it on her own but Will made me help him "swim" from one side of the pool to the other over and over again. I would let him go to the stairs on his own and make him jump off of them out to me but then I would take him across the pool. It made him happy. Kenzie was just being her little fishy self. About 20 minutes before we planned to get out we heard the loudest bang I think I have ever heard. Everyone in and around the pool jumped. A transformer blew. All of a sudden, it was super quiet as the power cut off to the hotel. It was quite something.
Eventually I had to bring Will back up to the room because he had an accident in his swimsuit and I needed to clean him up. The elevators were down so I was thankful we were only on the second floor because I had to carry him up the stairs. Luckily, we had hot water to clean up but there were no lights in the room. We also had TV. I'm not 100% sure what things blew exactly but it seemed like things that pulled more power. Like the AC and elevators. Those were obviously off. When Steven and Kenzie got up in the room the power was cycling through it seemed as they tried to fix it. We decided to get cleaned up and head out to the Old Seven Mile Bridge. We initially read that you could park near the Pigeon Key Visitor's Center on the opposite side of US 1 and walk out on the old bridge a ways but it was all shut down. I ran into the visitor's center to ask and the lady told me that it was supposed to have been opened back up for a month or two before they shut it down for the next few years as they fix the structural support of the old bridge to make it safer but they never opened it. She figured they were running late and would just end up running one project into another and not open it for a few years on the Marathon side. We ended up going across the bridge to Little Duck Key on the other side to see if we could walk over there and sure enough, we could. We walked out part way on the bridge. It was super beautiful but super hot so we didn't stay out there too long. We decided to let Kenzie use my little point and shoot camera sometimes on the trip and this seemed like a great time to give it to her. She actually took some pretty good pictures. It's so nice having a kid that can not only physically take pics without help but often gets them to be not blurry and sometimes even has a good eye. That doesn't mean I don't have random pictures of holes in the street and shadows because I have that too. I just don't keep those. Haha! I'm loving seeing things from her perspective though. Funny the things I miss because I'm not down on her level.
We decided after the bridge to run to K-Mart. For some reason we always run into this K-Mart when we are in Marathon because they have awesome souvenir type stuff for less than in a souvenir shop. We had been promising Kenzie goggles since she did so well with her swim lessons this year so we wanted to grab those before the beach tomorrow. Steven and I also found some awesome UPF 40 fishing shirts that we are going to use more as rash guards that say Marathon on them so they serve as rash guards and a souvenir. Perfect! Plus, we needed more bottled water and some applesauce pouches because Will has a serious applesauce problem. As in he needs an Applesauce Anonymous group to join. We ended up having McDonald's for lunch. It was quick and easy. That was good when we really just wanted to get back to the hotel to "relax" some before our busy afternoon. The kids each ate their Happy Meals and then we headed back to the hotel to "rest". The kids were both exhausted. Kenzie ate most of her lunch with her head on the table and Will continued to be so over tired that he acted like we had given him some sort of caffeine pills or something. We pulled the sofa bed out and let them relax while they watched TV. We wanted to rest a bit before heading out to Key West in the afternoon and we knew that at least Will would nap on the way down there but if Kenzie didn't we still wanted her to have some down time since she isn't getting "rest time" on this vacation.
Right about 2pm we set out again. This time... to Key West. Steven drove Grandaddy in their car and I drove Grandma in ours. Unfortunately, we cannot fit everyone in the same car so we had to take two and Grandma is not keen on driving in Key West so we elected to have Steven drive their car. Not a big deal. Just something to remember when you have minimal room. The drive down was uneventful. Will fell asleep about 2 minutes after we left the hotel and Kenzie chatted the entire way. We ended up taking the long way around the island once we hit Key West so that Will could nap a bit longer. We didn't have too much trouble finding parking around the Southernmost Point (Trivia Notes: The Southernmost Point buoy is not at the Southernmost Point. It is just at the most southern point you can go without having clearance to enter the Naval Air Base.) The line was pretty long waiting to take pictures, which is what we have always experienced here, so Steven dropped his parents car off in a parking spot behind mine and they sat in the car while we braved the heat. Steven keeps saying that there are levels of heat: Rest of the Country Hot, Florida Hot, Surface of the Sun Hot, and then there is Key West Hot. It was torture but we braved it for the pictures. Kenzie was having fun running around taking pictures with her camera anyway but Will wasn't as into the heat. He just wanted to be held, which doesn't help with the heat level. We were able to ask a nice couple to take our picture and then headed back to the cars.
We decided then to drop off Grandma and Grandaddy at the garage we would all be parking at later and we headed out to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park to see the fort. We actually really like the beach at the state park but we didn't have time for that so we wanted to just visit the fort. If we thought it was hot at the Southernmost Point, it was because we had not yet ventured to the fort. It was so hot that Will refused to walk. He was not having any of it. A few times we got him to get down to do something but most of the time he cried if he wasn't being held. Poor guy was done. We didn't stay long at the fort but it was fun to see it. We also saw a ton of iguanas around the fort including some huge ones that were showing off for pictures. They were posing it seemed. The kids did like those. Anytime Will has seen an iguana on this trip, he starts yelling about Maui turning into one in Moana. Crazy kid.
At this point it was nearing dinner so we headed back to the parking garage and met Grandma and Grandaddy in the little mall type thing next to it. We then decided to walk over to Alonzo's Oyster Bar for dinner. We have eaten here a few times and the food is always good. Will was still not having any of this but was ready for dinner so we were able to convince him to walk some knowing that food was just on the other side of the marina. Dinner was super yummy. Our service left something to be desired. Other than the kid's meal that the kids shared, everyone had something incorrect about their order. It was all figured out though and everything was good enough that we tried to not worry about it much. Kenzie wasn't into eating but did eventually finish some food. Will ate everything under the sun again. He especially liked my sweet corn mashed potatoes. The funny thing was though that he refused to eat Daddy's. I guess mine tasted better. Haha! When we left the restaurant we stopped to look at some of the boats and a man was feeding his shrimp peels to some tarpon by the docks. The kids thought that was awesome. I know they don't remember Robbies from our last trip and I can't wait to see how they react to the tarpon there in a couple of days. They are going to flip out. Sidenote: I cracked up when I looked at the pictures of pre-dinner Will and post-dinner Will. He definitely gives new meaning to the word "hangry".
We then walked back over to Mallory Square because it was nearing time for the Sunset Festival. We wanted to stop to do some souvenir shopping as well. We initially told the kids that they could each pick a t-shirt and a small toy or stuffed animal on this trip. Kenzie was insistent on a dress though. We found a pretty one with hula girls on it that she LOVED. We had a long discussion with her that based on the price, if she wanted the dress she would have to give up her toy. She insisted that was okay and we ended up with the dress. We couldn't find a good shirt in Will's size so we figure we will get one for him in Islamorada on the way home and he ended up picking out a stuffed pirate that he named Petey Pirate. He also decided that the pirate was missing his leg and has a peg leg because his leg was eaten by a shark. Quite the imagination on this one...
It was about time for the Sunset Festival then so we went over to the water. Kenzie seemed to think it was a show type thing we would watch. The kids weren't into the sunset itself mostly but they sat for a bit so we could get some pictures because it is beautiful. Then we went to see some of the performers, which fulfilled her "show" expectations. The best one we watched was the guy on the unicycle. Kenzie really enjoyed him so she asked if we could give him $1 when he was done, which we let her do. She asked me if we could go talk to him but I told her he needed to get ready for his next show. We also watched a sword swallower. He was good at what he does but he took forever to get to his one trick so he wasn't as exciting. He took so long that Kenzie actually questioned if he could even do the trick he was hyping up. We weren't so sure there for a bit. Will was just taking it all in but his favorite part was probably the chicken he saw. Whatever works. The Sunset Festival is one of my favorite parts of the Keys. I still stand that dealing with Key West with two small children is all made worth it by seeing the sun go down in Key West. It is so gorgeous.
We decided to head back after that because we knew we had an hour or so drive back into Marathon. The drive back was also uneventful. Just dark. We made it back with one sleeping child and one awake. Want to guess which was which? Kenzie fell asleep about 30 minutes into the trip. I had to carry her into the hotel (Steven's back can't handle her for long periods of time and he had already held her up to see the performers at the Sunset Festival) and she never even really woke up. When we got to the room I put her down to get Will changed into pjs and she climbed into the bed fully clothed and went back to sleep. We decided to just leave her. Will wanted to watch TV but we told him no and it wasn't long before he snuggled up to his sister and was asleep too. The best part was when I walked by to go to the bathroom, he was rubbing her cheek with his eyes closed just like he had done with me a couple nights before. So sweet. She was asleep so she didn't complain. Later when Steven walked by he noticed that they were both asleep and Kenzie was snuggled up with Petey Pirate and Will. They melt me. They might drive me to my wits end, but these moments make it all worth it. It helps that when they sleep, they are quiet. ;)
We had quite the long and hot day but it was awesome. Tomorrow we hit up one of the best beaches in the Keys, Bahia Honda. We have plans to go in the morning and go back again in the evening around sunset. It should make for a fun (and sandy) day.
Comments
Post a Comment